Model 28 Extended
Automatic Send Receive (XASR)

The Model 28 XASR (Stretch ASR) is a dual
typing-unit developed specially for the government to satisfy a
need for a single operator position requiring dual keyboards and
typing units. This was considered to be the Cadillac Limousine of
all teletype units in Washington DC during the cold war. The
Model 28 Stretch contains dual tape punches and a single
underdome reperf unit independently selectable from each current
loop, thus giving it the flexibility to support communication
operations while saving on valuable floor space.

Some interesting details about the XASR machines obtained via
the Freedom of Information Act.

There were only 347 units of the dual 28ASR ever built. The
system for which the machines were built remains a mystery to
this day, as all documentation regarding or referring to the
system was purged from the classified federal archives some time
between 1997 and 1999. The engineer of the project, a Mr. Lyman
F. Curtiss, apparently perished on a flight between San Juan,
Puerto Rico and Charleston late in 2000. No trace of the aircraft
was ever found. They were manufactured by Teletype under a
top-secret White House purchase order authorized by Lyndon
Johnson, issued only two weeks after he assumed the presidency.

The machines were kept in a warehouse that was located in an
air-conditioned facility located 400 feet directly below the
Senate office building. Access was through a tunnel whose
entrance was only accessible from a special elevator located on
the third floor of the senate office building, and the door to
the lift was perpetually marked "Out of Order". The
door could only be opened by a dual key system whose keylocks
were on either side of the door. The Secretary of Defense held
one key, and the Whitehouse Communications Officer held the
other. When the keys were actuated the president, who held a
third key which he carried on a lanyard around his neck, would
then complete the access sequence.

The red "HOLD" button on the president's oval office
telephone was equipped with a light which blinked for ten seconds
after the two keys held by the staffers were actuated. The
president then had only twenty seconds to insert his third key
into a concealed lock located underneath the lightswitch to the
oval office. Depressing the bottom of the switch plate unlatched
the door which flipped up revealing the lock cylinder. The three
keys having been actuated completed an interlock chain to the
control system for the elevator, which caused it to rise from the
bottom of the shaft to the third floor door and then opened.
SecDef and the Communications officer then had to place their
thumbs on a fingerprint reader. When the system was satisfied of
proper identity the elevator would then descend to the
aforementioned storage facility.

The facility was guarded by Marine Recon people dressed in
battle dress uniform, and armed with MP-5 sub-machine guns. The
elevator's occupants were frisked upon arrival and then required
to change into clothing similar to medical scrubs, and required
to wear surgical gloves. The assigned tasks were then completed
by SecDef and the Comm Officer, with a part of the sentry staff
filming them continuously. Return to the unsecure third floor of
the Senate Office building was a reverse of the procedure for
entry, with the exception that the elevator system required
retinal identification prior to returning the occupants to the
point of ingress.

The arrest of FBI Agent and spy Robert Hansson in 2001 and
subsequrent debriefing of Hansson revealed that the existence of
the entire complex was compromised early in 1987. The Russians at
that time immediately commenced a retaliatory effort by ordering
a Top-Secret division of the GRU to a location deep in the Ural
Mountains where an engineering facility costing upwards of fifty
billion rubles was built.

The facility ultimately produced a Russian equivalent of the
Extended 28ASR designated the Karansikov WW-73. The Karansikov
unit was decidedly inferior to the XASR in that it would accept
no more than 1 percent end distortion without garbling. No known
photographs of the Karansikov machines were ever taken, and the
facility was destroyed with all contents in 2003 by Serbian
commando teams equipped with tons of thermite devices, which
literally melted everything save for the concrete tunnels. The US
storage area was decommissioned by filling it with approximately
35,000 yards of concrete. Sadly, ALL of the machines were still
in top operational condition. Robert Hansson is now serving a
life term in solitary confinement in a maximum security federal
facility in Colorado. Little-known facts about a rare machine!!!

There were very few of these units produced. so if anyone has
any data or schematic on this unit, please E-Mail the WEB Masters
of this site with this information.